Radio Failure Procedures

[brownstar]

As a pilot I am curious as to your views on the current comms failure procedures. Do you think they are antiquated or adequate. Do you think that they are understood by pilots and controllers alike.
I think it is a potential for mayhem if the failure comes at a very bad time.
Gettting out of the U.K. seems fairly reasonable on comms failure from a pilot point of view (although it could cause a headache for ATC in London), but what about comming into uk, getting vectored, sequenced turned and then radio failure occurs. Where do you go then in this pea souper that is the south of England, with your minimum fuel.
I think that the comms failure need a rethink ,given the large number of aircraft now operating in this small airspace.

[begbie]

The best advice I can give to a pilot would be to squawk 7600 ASAP. This gives ATC the best chance poss of keeping other aircraft away from yours. There are procedures, but in my opinion they are antiquated, considering the complexity of the airspace (particularly the london TMA). In most cases it comes down to ATC trying to second guess the aircrew. Be sensible, slow descents etc, to help us out!

[begbie]

An example of the procedures being useless :

A couple of years ago, RYR departs Stansted for european destination (Italy I think). Went Radio fail before reaching DET at FL70/80. Procedures state that it should have climbed to Req FL and carried on to destination via flight planned route. Did it hell! Did a 180 and returned to Stansted. Prob the best option in my opinion but not what the book say!

[Jerricho]

As I was always taught, and I now pass on to trainees, you see 7600 on a squawk, expect anything...........

[aluminium persuader]

Squawk 7600, switch on yr mobile & call the appropriate unit! :ok:

[rab-k]

Nahhh, use the Sat'phone, let the company pick up the bill.;)

[peatair]

Radio fail procedures are definitely antiquated and, apart from Squawk 7600, are barely understood by pilots and ATCOs.

Always loved the bit about "Delay not determined" which would trigger what the old instructors called "the bog off" procedure.

Also, the old procedural approach courses were fun as aircraft below the assumed level of the radio fail were told to leave the hold as the radio fail was assumed to be descending through their levels!

Time for a rethink by someone somewhere.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Thing is, they don't happen all that often so they're a bit of a surprise. Must admit on the few I had, I just watched what was happening and kept other traffic out of the way.

A real cracker was the DC9 which had acknowledged the correct landing info and left the hold for a long downwind leg. He then went R/T fail and the landing runway went u/s!! Wx wasn't too good either. A certain amount of panic ensued whilst we thought of all sorts of ways to talk to the guy. Can't racall the outcome - either the runway came back as he was turning on to the ILS, or he fixed his radio at about the same time. Good oral board discussion point.

[aluminium persuader]

barely understood by pilots and ATCOs.

Civvy-wise, you could be right. However, at my unit radio-failure both simulated & genuine is something we get so much of we cannot really call it unusual. The only thing we might not pick up on is the triangle because that is rarely practised.

Last time I was on a fam-flight (3 years ago) the airline had a mobile phone on the flight-deck of every single aircraft. They were found to help enormously down-route with the usual hassles, but would obviously be a useful tool in the event of radio-fail.

But here's a chestnut - could you issue a clearance via txt? ;)

[VinMan]

But here's a chestnut - could you issue a clearance via txt? ;)
Legally, I don't know or care, but I actually received a landing clearance SMS from an Italian TWR in 2002, as a friend of us made a relay with his cell-phone.
"CLR TO LAND RWY 33"
Hilarious and silent approach, and big fire engines in tow after landing. Normal procedure I guess !
In the case of a technical glitch, a radio failure say, any means is good to overcome the situation.

[Paul Wilson]

On a technical point SMS texts are not prioritised at all by the network, and only get sent when there is spare network capacity. Now most of the time there is spare capacity and they go straight through, but if the local cell is very busy texts can take hours to go through, (a few minutes is more common though).

[ShamRoc]

Thing is, they don't happen all that often so they're a bit of a surprise. Must admit on the few I had, I just watched what was happening and kept other traffic out of the way.
A real cracker was the DC9 which had acknowledged the correct landing info and left the hold for a long downwind leg. He then went R/T fail and the landing runway went u/s!! Wx wasn't too good either. A certain amount of panic ensued whilst we thought of all sorts of ways to talk to the guy. Can't racall the outcome - either the runway came back as he was turning on to the ILS, or he fixed his radio at about the same time. Good oral board discussion point.

Was/is it not possible to plug into the ILS and make a broadcast? As I recall on the ILS Monitor in the TWR there was a socket into which a handset could be plugged and a voice tranmission made. Mind you we are talking some time ago!